Imagine you open your browser and it’s 2016. You Google the words “Buffy the Vampire Slayer full episodes online,” the air has just turned to autumn, and you’re freshly in high school with nothing better to do than watch 90s TV programs.
Binge-watching Buffy for the first time was a cultural revelation for me. Watching a young woman battle hordes of monsters to protect humanity’s fate was another thing altogether. I was, as one would say, inspired. I donned a leather jacket and bought myself some leather pants that, looking back, were probably too tight.
The show’s brilliance lies not only in Sarah Michelle Gellar’s phenomenal acting but in the program’s ability to weave metaphors into almost every episode. The monsters are not just demons, but expressions of the horrors of growing up in almost every episode. A mother steals her daughter’s body in one episode, trying to relive her adolescence. The town is named Sunnydale, but in actuality is a gateway to Hell dubbed the “Hellmouth,” showing that although high school may be hell, maybe that small town you live in isn’t as perfect and innocent as you thought either — especially when your boyfriend turns evil right after sleeping with him, and you are forced to confront the loss of childhood innocence.
The show was by no means perfect in every episode. Sometimes the acting could only be described as cringy, the CGI in season six was abysmal and sometimes, on occasion, the episodes were just badly written. Despite these flaws, I think the show was one of the first to talk about teenage problems without romanticizing certain aspects, touching on topics of addiction, grief, queer identity, depression and uncertainty.
Buffy, in my books, remains untouchable in the land of television, producing 144 episodes starting in 1997 and concluding in 2003. The show, unlike other television programs in the early 2000s, had a complex and strong female lead whose character was not oriented toward a male love interest. Like many female leads at this time, Sarah Michelle Gellar was a conventionally attractive woman. Unlike television in the late 90s, where women were often portrayed as tragic heroines, she would meet monsters in dark alleys and kick their asses.
Many others view Buffy the Vampire Slayer as an important stepping stone in television history. Professor Matthew Pateman, head of English and creative arts at Edge Hill University, first started introducing Buffy as a lecture topic in the early 2000s as a part of popular culture, later writing a book titled The Aesthetics of Culture in Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Despite Buffy having concluded well over a decade ago, fans, including myself, cannot help but rewatch it over and over again. I think there’s something nostalgic in seeing the fuzzy camera quality which Buffy was filmed with and living vicariously through the characters, because all I wanted to be was to be Buffy.
For others who still reminisce about the world of Buffy, I would say you’re definitely not alone. For anyone who wants to watch it this fall season, I would highly recommend you do that.
